Three-time champion Victoria Azarenka (Belarus) has qualified for the second round of the WTA 1000 Miami Open with a prize fund of almost 9 million USD.
The winner of the competition in 2009, 2011 and 2016 started with a straight-set victory against Anhelina Kalinina (Ukraine) with 2-0 (6:3, 6:1) in a little over an hour.
The match started evenly, but after 3:3 Victoria Azarenka made a series of eight consecutive games on her way to the final victory. So in the second round she will play against the 2023 Roland Garros runner-up and 15th-seeded Karolina Muchova (Czech Republic).
British player Emma Raducanu achieved her first success in her third appearance in Miami, after convincingly defeating wild card Japanese player Sayaka Ishii by 2-0 (6:2, 6:1) in 65 minutes.
The 19-year-old Ishii, who has risen from 381st to 188th in the world rankings in the past 12 months, played in only her third main draw at a WTA Tour event, but she failed to put up any significant resistance. She lost nine consecutive games after 2:2, which proved decisive.
Emma Raducanu, the 2021 US Open champion, will face eighth-seeded Emma Navarro in the Round of 64.
Two other wildcards, Alexandra Eala (Philippines) and Victoria Mboko (Canada), also won in the first round.
The 19-year-old Alexandra Eala defeated Katie Volynets (USA) by 2-0 (6:3, 7:6(3)). The Filipina, currently ranked 140th in the world, came back from a 1-3 game deficit in the first set, and in the second half, she initially squandered a 5:3 lead before winning the ensuing tiebreak after making a run of six consecutive points. The teenager’s next opponent will be 2018 finalist and 25th-seeded Jelena Ostapenko (Latvia).
The 18-year-old Victoria Mboko defeated Camila Osorio (Colombia) by 2-1 (7:5, 5:7, 6:3) in just over two and a half hours on court. The Canadian achieved her first main draw victory on the WTA Tour and her debut win against a top-100 player.
Victoria Mboko has 28 wins in 29 matches with five titles on the ITF circuit this season, which allowed her to progress to 162nd in the world rankings, and her performance against the world’s No 54 Camila Osorio showed that she can compete at the highest professional level in tennis. She now awaits a match against 10th-seeded Paula Badosa (Spain).
